


Free Threesome Thursdays at the Craft Garage

by la_dissonance



Category: Bandom, Empires
Genre: Alternate Universe - Professional, Established Relationship, Flirting, M/M, Power Play, Relationship Negotiation, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 04:17:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_dissonance/pseuds/la_dissonance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Julio is the hottest customer ever to cross the threshold of Tom and Sean's yarn shop. Cracky AU shenanigans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Free Threesome Thursdays at the Craft Garage

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes inlovewithnight comes up with terrible, awesome ideas that won't quit gnawing at my brain until I write them all down. This was one of those times. Many thanks to lalejandra for wrangling all my commas and pointing out when the story wasn't quite done yet. Any remaining mistakes are my own!

It's a slow day when Hot Tall Guy walks in the shop for the first time. Tom's reading a magazine behind the register and only glances up long enough to verify that it's not Sean coming back from his sandwich run already. The guy browses around for a couple minutes, and Tom keeps half an eye on him like he's done with everyone since that lady succeeded in walking out with four skeins of angora stuffed in her bra two years ago. It's enough to give him some idea that the guy's maybe kind of hot, but Tom doesn't get a good look at him until he ambles to the back of the store and places his purchases on the counter.

"Find everything okay?" Tom asks.

"Yup," the guy says, and flashes Tom a smile so dazzling it makes his insides flutter in a way that has nothing to do with how close to lunchtime it is, because god _damn_. Sure, Tom has maybe seen movie stars hotter than this guy, but they weren't sneaking up at him out of the blue, he was prepared.

Realizing he is maybe staring, Tom busies himself scanning in the guy's two packets of buttons and single skein of yarn. "The organic cotton's a really great yarn, good choice. We, um, just got that in a couple weeks ago, actually."

 _Quit babbling, Conrad,_ he tells himself, but the hot guy doesn't seem to care.

"Oh yeah? Awesome. It's for a present for my niece, I'm making her these gloves with owls on them — do you think this one will be good for a chunky cable knit, with the way it's plied like that?"

"Huh?" Tom regards the skein with a critical eye, but it looks totally normal to him.

"It's not going to come out all uneven?"

Tom's starting to get the sense this is a stupid question, but he tries to keep the condescension out of his voice for the guy's sake. "Why would it come out uneven?"

Julio gestures at the skein Tom's still holding. "The way there's like, a tiny little thread wrapped around the big fluffy one? That won't mess up the stitches? I did a cable knit once before, but the strands in the yarn were all the same size."

Ah, a beginner. Tom secretly loves beginners, but he hates accidentally over-explaining something someone already knows, so he usually assumes that everyone is highly skilled at their hobby and knows exactly what they're doing just to save his own ass. He wishes he had some of the giant diagrams of stitch structure that he uses with the beginner classes hanging around, but they went missing last week and no one's been able to find them yet. Still, he does the best he can with just his fingers and a lot of expressive gesturing, finishing with, "...it should be totally fine no matter what gauge needle you use, but if you're really worried, you'll be doing a test swatch anyway, right? If it looks okay in stockinette, it should come out fine in cable, too."

The guy flashes him a grin, miraculously not looking bored. "You promise?"

"Cross my heart," Tom says.

"Awesome," the guy says again, and Tom finds that it's impossible not to grin back.

"That comes to thirteen seventy-two," he says, holding out his hand for the guy's credit card.

Tom swipes the card a couple times, but their card reader never worked great when it was brand new, so it's no surprise when it doesn't go through. He keys the number in slowly, hoping that if he works slowly enough, Sean will get back with their sandwiches and get a chance to see this guy for himself.

"Can I see I.D.?" Tom asks once he's entered the number.

The guy makes a face, and Tom shrugs apologetically. "It's not signed," he says, flipping the card over as if the guy needs evidence that his own credit card isn't signed.

"I usually do debit on that one, sorry," the guy says, digging around in his wallet for his I.D.

"Julio Tavarez," Tom reads out loud, holding the two cards up to compare them. If he also maybe sneaks a quick peek at Julio's address, no one has to know; he's just curious if Julio's from around here. There is a serious dearth of tall, handsome, male yarncraft enthusiasts in this neighborhood, Tom and Sean themselves excluded.

"That's me," Julio says, hand twitching toward the card. "Don't look at the picture if you don't have to, it's a really terrible one."

"Everyone's picture looks horrible," Tom says. If he were Sean, he'd have found some way to turn that into some completely effortless flirtatious remark, but he's not, so the best he can do is commiserate.

"True," Julio says, slipping both cards back into his wallet. "It's like some rule at the DMV."

Tom nods knowingly, and tries to inconspicuously look past Julio to see if he can see any sign of Sean coming down the sidewalk, but there's nothing. The cafe isn't even one block away, how long could this possibly take? There's only so long Tom can reasonably stall a simple sale.

Tom bags Julio's purchases as carefully as he can, wrapping the buttons separately in their smallest paper bag and then unwrapping them when Julio objects — "You can just throw it all in one bag, man, save the trees, right?" — but with only three items, even that takes only so long, and eventually he has to give Julio the bag and bid him farewell.

"Have a great day," Tom says, the stock phrase rolling off his tongue without any specific intention on his own part.

"You too," Julio says, grinning again as if he genuinely means it, and turns as if to go.

"We're open seven days a week," Tom adds quickly, in a last ditch effort. "So if you ever need anything else..."

"For sure," Julio says. He turns back toward Tom and leans against the counter like he might have intentions to stay a bit longer.

"I mean, I'm not personally here twenty-four-seven," Tom says, and _god_ , he needs to learn when to turn his mouth off. "But Max and Mike are here on the weekends, and Sean knows just as much about everything as I do, so any of us should be able to help you. You know. If you needed anything yarn-related."

Julio grins that dazzling grin again, and Tom feels his own face grinning back. Hottest random customer _ever_ , seriously. "I didn't even know this place was here until I walked past last week," he says. "You're like a little buried treasure."

"Well," Tom says, then stops, because he hates publicity, and all the oppressive expectations that come with it, and what even is he supposed to say to that?

"Now that I know I'll definitely be back, though. This definitely beats Michaels."

Tom makes his 'ugh, don't get me started about Michaels' face, and Julio smiles ruefully and taps his watch.

"I should get going, but hey, nice talking to you," and he smiles again and it's all Tom can do to rather breathlessly wish him a nice day again watch him leave. He maybe ogles his ass as he goes, too. Just in case Sean asks when Tom tells him all about this later.

Sean shows up not even two minutes later, of course, burdened with a bag full of sandwiches and the blissful ignorance of those who have not tried and failed to flirt with the hottest customer likely to ever step foot in the shop.

"Dude, what the hell took you so long, you missed _everything_ ," Tom says, by way of greeting, and then proceeds to relate the entire interaction in minute detail while Sean shucks his jacket and unwraps his sandwich.

"You totally want to get in his pants," Sean says, nodding sagely as he chews.

"Well, duh."

"But..."

"But nothing."

Sean just raises his eyebrows and keeps eating, while Tom silently marvels anew at Sean's ability to see right through him. Tom hadn't even known there was a 'but' until Sean had pointed it out to him, and he's definitely not sure he can put his reservations into words right now. He pours his energy into devouring his sandwich instead, and Sean leaves him to it. By the time Tom gets back from throwing out their wrappers in the dumpster out back, he feels like he maybe has a kernel of the truth.

"I guess...I dunno, I'm getting bored with randomly hooking up?" It's true; it's been just Sean for him for months, even though they'd started out with no intention of exclusivity. "As long as you don't go starting yarn shops with anyone else," Sean had said, and it's served them well so far. Except... "But I don't _not_ want to hook up with him, either. Maybe if you were there, too? Like...a three-way hookup?"

"You'll be shocked, but I think people have tried that before. I've heard they even go so far as to call it a three-way officially."

Tom buries his head in his arms. "Oh, god, I would laugh so hard if anyone but me had said that."

"You would," Sean says, barely keeping from laughing himself.

"But seriously, though," Tom says. "That's something I would be into, if you were into it."

Sean makes a considering hum. "How hot did you say this guy was?"

"So hot," Tom says immediately. "And really nice, you'd probably love him."

Sean rolls his eyes. "Well, I don't know about _that_..."

And then the bell tinkles as someone walks in, and the conversation gets put off to another time in their rush to assume a semi-professional demeanor.

—

"That's _him_ ," Tom hisses in Sean's ear one day two weeks later, bumping his hip to make sure he's paying attention and nodding toward the door. They're slammed, as busy as they ever are, what with the middle-school beginner class just ending and the ensuing rush of parents and caretakers picking up their charges and shopping while they're at it. Sean's helping two or three people simultaneously out on the floor, and Tom's got a line more than two people deep at the register, which is as busy as they ever get aside from after Monday night stitch-n-bitch. Tom doesn't count that because it's not all these people in a rush to get somewhere, though; the stitch-n-bitch group just kind of hangs out until the store closes and then more often than not invite Tom and Sean to go drinking with them.

Busy as they are, Tom still looks up when the door chimes with a new person coming in, and his blood rushes a little faster when he sees it's Julio. Not that either of them could _do_ anything about it, this is literally the worst time, but just the fact that he's _here_...

"You're really hopping today," Julio says, when it's his turn in line.

Two other people immediately get in line behind him, and Sean gets pulled away to look something up for someone on the computer in the back office, so Tom really doesn't have the chance to do more than agree and wish Julio a great day and privately hope that he comes back again soon.

Later, though, after the last customer of the day has left and they're closing up shop, Tom corners Sean where he's tidying up their small but obligatory section of mass-produced acrylics and backs him into the shelves until they're standing flush against each other.

"Hottest customer ever, yes or motherfucking yes?" he asks into Sean's ear.

"Motherfucking yes," Sean says, letting out a shaky breath when Tom nibbles on his earlobe.

The conversation devolves into the mostly-nonverbal from there, and the mass-produced acrylics need a second tidying up after they're done, but consensus is clear: Julio the Hot Customer needs to be seduced, and the sooner the better.

"You could pull it off," Tom says, fastidiously straightening Sean's shirt collar for him, even though they're going to go upstairs and take their clothes off again within the next ten minutes. Sean catches his hands and brushes a kiss to the fingertips.

"So what am I supposed to do, just go up to him all 'my boyfriend thinks you're hot, wanna bang?' That's it?"

"Sean," Tom says, leveling a stern gaze at him.

"You want me to just walk up to this guy in broad daylight and —"

"And use your superior flirtation skills to win him over, yes."

"What makes you so sure I have these skills, anyway?" Sean's eyes go wide and his eyebrows tilt up, and Tom doesn't think for one minute that that's not a calculated move.

"You seduced _me_ ," Tom points out. "You seduced me into opening a _yarn shop_ with you. There is no doubt in my mind you could seduce Julio into spending one night with us."

Sean hooks his thumbs into Tom's belt loops and grins big and dopy. "Yeah, after you threw yourself at me."

Tom shakes the accusation off; it's an argument they've had a million times before. Right now there are more pressing matters at hand. "Next time he comes in, if it's not a Tuesday. Get him for us, Sean."

"Yeah, if you say." Sean gets that little pleased smile he gets whenever Tom gives him something to do, and a warm, possessive feeling uncurls in Tom's chest. That's all his, something Sean does just for Tom.

"I do say," Tom says, and is gratified when Sean goes a little boneless underneath him.

—

Tom hadn't been pegging much hope on when (or even if) they'd see Julio again, but in the end he only has to wait until next Thursday. This time they're more ready for him, complete with plans of attack they've gone over as recently as that very morning in bed in between sleepy handjobs. The plans mostly consist of Julio showing up and Sean doing... whatever it is he does to make people instantly fall for him, but they get vastly more detailed once they progress to the point where they get Julio into their bedroom.

"Do you think about him doing this to you?" Tom asks, Sean's dick heavy in his hand and Sean's breath heavy in his ears. They're both close, but Tom wants to hold off just a little longer. "He's got such big hands, he'd just —"

Sean makes an appreciative noise in the back of his throat, and Tom jacks him a little faster. "Or imagine if you went down on him, you all on your knees, and him with his cock —" Tom doesn't have to finish the thought; it's a scenario they've played out plenty of times on their own.

"Fuck," Sean gasps, and comes all over the inside of his sleep pants and the sheets they had meant to change soon anyway.

The shop is so deserted all day that they eventually run out of work for two people to do, even including the fussy paperwork stuff they always put off for last. Tom's gone upstairs to the apartment catch up on chores and is in the midst of stripping the dirty sheets from the bed, when Julio shows up, and is only alerted to his presence by a text from Sean that reads _come cover the register, busy helping some1 ;)_

When Tom gets downstairs, Julio and Sean are bent over a bin of silk laceweight, heads close together while Sean earnestly explains its particular merits. Tom settles on the stool behind the counter, a good spot from which to keep an eye on proceedings without getting involved and fucking things up before Sean's had a chance to work his magic. There are no other customers in the shop to steal Tom's attention, and he wonders if it would be creepy to preemptively flip the "open" sign to "closed" so they don't get interrupted. Probably would be.

"No seriously, even I can't believe how soft this stuff is — not the softest stuff we sell, but still, you have to just —"

Julio takes skein of yarn that Sean hands him and rubs it against his face, breaking out into that addictive grin. It apparently has much the same effect on Sean that it does on Tom, because he clears his throat and says, with a trace of difficulty, "Alright, if you think that one's good, you have to feel this one over here..."

He leads Julio to a different shelf and thrusts a different skein into Julio's hands, which Julio obligingly feels up and makes the appropriate noises of appreciation.

Eventually, Sean drags Julio away from the luxury yarns and Tom gathers that Julio's embarking on a very vague make-something-for-coworker's-baby project, one for which he has none of the materials and needs tons of advice. They lucked out, Tom thinks, watching Sean lead Julio around the store, flipping through various pattern books to show him his own personal recommendations and telling him all about the one time he had to make something for a baby. Max is the one who's made the most baby things; he's got approximately one million older siblings.

They wander farther away and Tom can't make out what they're saying, so he just watches their body language instead. They're standing so close together that whenever one of them reaches for something, their elbows bump together, and Sean keeps saying things that make Julio laugh out loud, bright and open. Dammit, they look so _good_ together. Tom knows Sean probably has a plan, probably knows exactly what he's doing, but that doesn't stop his imagination from running wild: he wants one of Sean's light touches on Julio's shoulder to linger longer than a second or two, wants to see what Julio would do if Sean's hand crept to his neck and they leaned their heads just a little closer, wants to see Julio tip his head back as Sean mouths along his jaw...

Tom tries to send Sean _It would be okay if you made out with this guy right now, right in the middle of the store_ mind beams, to no success.

It's right about then that Sean leans over to say something into Julio's ear, and Julio glances over at Tom, quickly as if he doesn't want to be caught. It's too quick for Tom to smile and wave, or do anything other than stare back with his mouth a little open, really. Had they been talking about him? What did Sean _say_?

"Cool, cool, definitely," Julio is saying as they make their way back toward Tom's corner, nodding along enthusiastically to whatever it is Sean asked him. Tom desperately wants to know what the beginning half of that conversation was, so he knows how much he has to temper his currently out-of-control expectations, but Sean had been talking way too quietly for Tom to make any of it out, even listening as hard as he was.

Sean ducks behind the counter and goes rummaging around for a scrap of paper, but what he ends up writing down is his Ravelry username, not his phone number. Tom glares daggers at him, but Sean just smirks. Fine.

"Here you go," Sean says, turning a much more charming smile on Julio as he hands the paper over.

Julio grins back. "Awesome, I'll hit you up."

Tom might be imagining things, but if you asked him, he'd say their hands definitely came into way more contact than is strictly necessary for passing a slip of paper. Frustratingly, this doesn't mean anything conclusive for their flirtation goals; Sean is a touchy person even when not on sexy missions, and maybe Julio's the same way.

Julio dumps his purchases on the counter and reaches for his wallet. The conversation, whatever it was, seems to be over, leaving an awkward silence in its wake. Tom curses whatever gods may be listening for leaving him in charge of coming up with small talk.

"So...making a blanket?"

Julio nods like Tom has said something actually intelligent. "Yup. I thought it would be too boring, but Sean here convinced me otherwise. Much harder to grow out of than a tiny cardigan."

"But blankets _are_ boring," Tom says, before he can think better of it. He sneaks a guilty look over to Sean, but Sean just looks amused.

"Don't listen to this guy, he's never made a blanket in his life."

"Have too," Tom says. "I made that shawl that time."

"The one that took you six months and then you made me finish it?"

"He volunteered," Tom tells Julio, which is not exactly the truth but close enough.

Julio just crinkles his eyes up and laughs, and Tom thinks that maybe he was selling him a little bit short, thinking of him as nothing more than 'the hot guy' in his head. He bumps Sean's hip and looks over to see if he's shared this epiphany, but Sean is stuck staring at Julio's throat-collarbone-chest area with a glassy expression. Well. The get-Julio-into-their-bed portion of the plan was definitely not a mistake, whatever else may happen later.

Sean snaps himself out of it the second time Tom (subtly) jostles him, and slips one of the shop's business cards into his bag before handing it over with way more finger-brushing than strictly necessary. "It was great chatting, man, see you soon," he says.

"Yeah, same to you." Julio nods at both of them and then turns for the door. Tom has a moment of blind panic.

"'See you soon'?" he hisses at Sean under his breath. "That's it?"

"Well, you know..." Sean trails off, eying Julio's retreating back.

The problem is, Tom does not know, and Julio is about to walk out of the shop and possibly out of their lives. Forever. "What about _the deal_?"

Tom's sense of urgency has apparently made him incautious, because Julio pauses and turns around, laughter dancing in the edges of his eyes. "What deal?"

They've tried it Sean's way, which is sexy and subtle and fun, but if that didn't work, they've got nothing to lose by trying it Tom's way. Tom's way is none of those things, but it has been known to get the job done.

"The free threesome with any purchase deal we're running today," Tom says. "Sean didn't mention it?"

The laughter Julio'd been fighting spills out and he doubles over, gasping for air. "The free — threesome — do you really offer those with _any_ purchase?"

"Just when the people who make them are really, really hot and we really, really want to sleep with them," Tom says, feeling the corners of his mouth tug up. See, that hadn't been so bad.

Behind him, Sean is shaking his head slowly, looking amused but also like he wants to cover his face with his hands and crawl under the counter.

"My god, Tom, I already invited him to dinner. We could have been classy."

"Oh," Tom says.

"Yeah."

"I maybe panicked," Tom says, scrunching up his face apologetically.

"For the record, I'm open to either going to dinner or whatever Tom has in mind," Julio says, walking up and leaning against the counter between them.

"I think Tom was just planning on shagging you over the counter, honestly."

Tom giggles. "You said 'shagging'."

"What, like that wasn't your plan?"

Tom shrugs and finds himself distracted by the very deep v-neck on Julio's shirt. "I dunno."

"This is one of the least coordinated threesomes I've ever been in that didn't involve alcohol," Julio offers. "And even some of those were more coordinated than this."

Sean's face goes pink. "Well, we had been planning, but we hadn't really gotten around to the logistics yet. You came back sooner than we were expecting."

"What _did_ you plan, then?" Julio's fingers are inching toward Sean's forearm on the counter, and Tom thinks that if one of them doesn't touch the other soon, he might explode.

"Are you busy right now?" Tom asks. "It would be so much easier to show you."

Sean's face goes more toward the red end of pink at this, and he regards Julio with an expression that could only be described as hungry. Tom suspects he's in much the same condition.

"Hell no, not busy in the slightest." Julio looks between them and licks his lips.

Which is how they end up turning over the Open sign and dragging the world's hottest customer into their bedroom in the middle of the day. Small business ownership may be tough sometimes, but it definitely has its perks.

They make it as far as the doorway to the back room before Julio presses himself against Tom chest-to-chest and backs him against the nearest vertical surface, which happens to be their filing cabinet.

"No one can see us from the sidewalk here, right?"

"Nope," Tom says, a little breathless.

"Good, because I've been wanting to do this since..." The rest of the sentence gets cut off when Julio lowers his mouth to Tom's, but the general sentiment comes through loud and clear.

Things progress to the point where Tom has his shirt unbuttoned to the waist and Julio's hands hot on his skin before Sean tugs on his shoulder and says "Hey, my turn now." His voice is all low and rough like it gets when he's really turned on, and Tom only wants to make it rougher.

"Yeah," he says, nudging Julio toward Sean. "Julio, there's a chair somewhere, go sit down."

Julio's eyebrows go up a little, but Sean just leans in and nips at his ear. "He gets really bossy during sex. It's hot."

"I think I can roll with that," Julio says, and the way he looks at Tom with his eyes all dark says that he can definitely roll with that.

The only chair in the room is the rolly one that goes with the desk, but they back it into a corner and make things work. Sean gets Julio's pants undone at Tom's prompting, then sinks to his knees, graceless and intent.

Julio looks just as pretty with his head tipped back as Tom imagined he would, and he just aches to touch. Later, though. Right now is for looking, for memorizing the way the two of them look together in case they never get to do this again.

"You're just going to watch?" Julio asks at one point, meeting Tom's eyes as Sean comes up for air.

"Too good of a view to ignore," Tom says.

Sean whines.

"Pet his face," Tom says. "He likes that." He also likes being told how pretty he is on his knees, but for now Tom is fine with being the only one to say that.

Sean is good at looking pretty while giving head, but he's also quite skilled at giving really great head, so it's not long before Julio is panting and flushed and squirming in his seat.

"I'm not going to last," he warns, throwing his head back as if the admission has cost him greatly. Tom wants to bite along his exposed neck.

"Good," Tom says, maybe leaning forward on the desk a little bit.

"No," Julio says, his forehead creasing with effort.

"I want to see you," Tom says, but Julio isn't listening.

"Stop, c'mon," he says to Sean, tugging gently at his hair.

Sean pulls off but hovers a hair's breadth over the head of Julio's cock, a move Tom knows from experience is way worse than no contact at all. He looks totally wrecked, eyes blown and lips swollen, and he's looking at Tom like he thinks Tom knows what will happen next.

Before Tom can open his mouth, though, Julio's slipping off the chair and crouching in front of Sean, tugging at his shirt and pants simultaneously like he can't decide which he wants off more.

"Holy shit, Sean, your mouth," he's saying, over and over, and that's it, Tom's had his fill of watching. He slides off the desk and joins them on the floor, helping Sean out of his t-shirt while Julio goes for his belt buckle. It's a matter of moments before they've got a naked Sean swaying on his knees between them. Tom mouths at his shoulder, relishing the press of his bare chest to the hot skin of Sean's back, but Julio goes straight for his cock. He does have big hands, Tom notes happily, as Sean practically keens when Julio wraps one of them around him. Sean sags against Tom, and Tom wraps an arm around him.

"Yeah," Tom says into Sean's ear, but they're all so close together now that Julio can hear him just as well. "Do you have any idea how you look right now, so pretty."

"Do you have any idea how you felt, fuck," Julio adds, leaning forward and opening his mouth against Sean's in a messy kiss.

Sean whines again, high and needy, Tom holds him up while Julio finishes him off.

"And what do you want, Mr. Bossy?" Julio asks, shifting around to Tom's side.

Sean curls up against Tom's other side and Tom runs his fingers through his hair, earning a happy sigh in return. "I just want to watch you with him some more, honestly."

"Not without getting off first, you don't," Julio says, and he sounds so serious that Tom barks out a surprised laugh.

"You think I'm joking, but I'm not. And I'll have you know I give a _mean_ blowjob." And with that Julio springs and tackles Tom onto the floor.

Much later, after things have settled into a lot of very lazy, rather sticky but entirely satisfying making out, talk turns to dinner. Sean is all for letting Julio use their shower and ordering in and letting things progress naturally to round two and perhaps even three, but Tom insists that they make some effort to salvage the parts of Sean's plan that Tom's panic had cost them.

"I just feel bad," Tom says. "Not that this happened," he hastily adds, "Because this was great, and we should do it again as soon as possible."

"Amen," Julio says.

"But..." Sean prompts.

"But we would have all gone out for dinner if I hadn't fucked things up, it was part of your plan."

Sean blinks at him. "But the whole point of that was to get _here_."

"Can we just go out anyway? It would..." Tom makes a floppy hand gesture. It would flip the cosmic scales back to where they were supposed to be, somehow, but that would sound stupid out loud.

"Maybe I should go and let you guys talk?" Julio asks, looking between the two of them. He's already tugging his clothes back on.

"You seriously don't have to," Sean says, and Julio holds up his hand.

"I'll go get cleaned up and meet you back here in an hour, and then we can decide whether to go out?"

"We have a shower right here," Sean says, shooting a look at Tom like _Is this okay?_

Tom nods. There's nothing he can do about having messed up Sean's previous plan, but at least he can avoid walking all over his current plan now.

"Cool," Julio says, scrambling to his feet.

"C'mon, I'll show you where it is," Tom says, shooting a look at Sean to see if he's paying attention to how well Tom can follow someone else's plan when he puts his mind to it. Sean just narrows his eyes and shakes his head a little, like he doesn't get it but is humoring Tom anyway. Somehow that just makes Tom feel _worse_ , so he ducks his head and launches himself up the stairs, beckoning Julio to follow him.

"I'll probably be in here for a while," Julio says, once Tom's shown him how to trick the finicky temperature knob into working and scrounged up a clean towel for him.

"Okay," Tom says.

"So if you happened to be having some kind of important couple conversation, I'm not likely to accidentally barge in on you. Also I'll probably use up all your hot water, fair warning in advance."

Tom grimaces, and then snorts back a laugh, before managing to iron his face into something resembling neutral hospitality. He thanks Julio, then babbles out something about the soap because thanking him for an offer of privacy feels weird, then beats a hasty retreat before Julio can say anything else.

Tom detours to the bedroom to finish putting sheets on the bed, and by the time he's done, Sean's already dressed and puttering around the kitchen, humming softly to himself as he puts clean dishes away. Tom hovers in the doorway for a minute, watching Sean be uncomplicatedly happy. It doesn't reconcile well with Tom's own creeping sense of abject guilt.

"So, Julio thinks we need to talk," Tom says finally, going over to the sink. He hovers there until Sean finishes emptying the last couple things out of the top rack of the dishwasher, then starts sorting through the sink for top-rack things to load it back up with.

"He did seem fairly insistent on that point, yes," Sean agrees.

Tom upends a coffee mug into the dishwasher and it splashes murky, ice-cold water on his toes, making him curse.

"Do _you_ think we need to talk?" Sean asks, after a minute. He gently takes a tupperware lid out of Tom's hand and dumps some watery soup remnants out of it before handing it back to him.

"I dunno," Tom says. "Maybe?" They hardly ever fight; most of the time they just agree on stuff, like who has to make coffee in the mornings (Sean), and if they should quit their day jobs and open a business together (yes), and whether they should be exclusive (no). This is neither a fight nor a question, though.

"Is it about how things got all weird with Julio staying for dinner? Because I don't really know what's up with that."

Tom chews on the inside of his cheek, then blurts out, "Do you like him?"

"Yes," Sean says immediately.

"Good, me too," Tom says. The sink is empty, he realizes; there are no more dishes to load. "We should cook him dinner."

When Sean just raises an eyebrow in response, Tom gets the big pasta pot out of the cabinet, and fills it with water and throws some salt in, and carries it awkwardly around Sean to the stove because Sean won't get out of the way. Tom turns the burner on and sticks his head in the cabinet to find the pot lid, then opens the other cabinet to see what kind of pasta they have right now.

"Tom," Sean says.

"What?"

"I don't think that's what he meant for us to talk about?"

Tom finds a box of rotini behind the sugar and addresses it instead of Sean. "But if we didn't like him, we could just kick him out and never see him again, it wouldn't matter that —"

Sean makes an encouraging noise, and Tom can still hear water running in the bathroom if he listens for it, so he takes a deep breath and forges ahead. "We've never had a threesome before, right? And I never even thought about it because we tell each other about the people we sleep with all the time, but it felt like he was seeing something really private."

"I liked it," Sean says, quiet.

This surprises Tom into looking up at him, and Sean's expression is open, honest.

"Exhibitionist," Tom says, the corner of his mouth quirking up.

"Well, yeah," Sean says, and his cheeks go a little pink. "But if it doesn't work for you, we can figure something else out."

"It's not —" Tom pauses, worries the inside of his cheek some more. He's going to get a sore spot there if he's not careful. "I liked showing you off, liked him seeing how good you were. But some of the stuff we do, that's just for us. What if he thinks we're doing it wrong? I don't want him to see me mess up again, and I don't know how _not_ to."

"Oh, Tom." Sean crosses the space between them and folds Tom into his arms. "You didn't mess anything up," he says into his hair.

"Yes, I did." Tom curls into Sean and clings to him like if he could just pull him close enough, he could ease the horrible hollow ache in his chest.

"If you had messed something up bad enough for Julio to notice, I probably would have noticed too," Sean says, rather reasonably. It only makes Tom feel worse.

"Sometimes I tell you what to do," Tom says. "And you're good at it, and I like it, and _you_ like it, otherwise I wouldn't do it." Sean hums his agreement. "So getting Julio to sleep with us was one of those things, and you went out and figured out what to do, but I didn't let you do it, and that was shitty."

Sean pats Tom's back and Tom lets out a shaky breath.

"I guess I always assumed that since you were the one giving the orders, you had it all figured out. That was pretty shitty of me, too," Sean says.

"No, but," Tom says, and Sean pulls back and puts a finger on his lips.

"We both messed up when we didn't talk about this as soon as we realized it was a thing," Sean says. "And now that we know, we can fix it."

"Okay," Tom says. The knot of guilt in his chest loosens a little, and when Sean tips his chin up and kisses him, Tom feels like he's finally able to breathe again.

"We'll figure out how this thing works, and we will _rock_ it. Because I definitely do not want to stop, please don't think that is even an option," Sean says against Tom's mouth.

Behind them, the pasta pot starts to boil, and Sean reaches around Tom to grab the box of pasta and pour it into the pot.

"Fuck, yes," Tom says, smiling. His chest is still hollow, a little, but it's not so terrible anymore. It'll pass. And if he fucks up again, he can tell Sean, and they can figure out how to make it better again.

"What about Julio?" Tom asks after a minute, when he realizes they're both kind of just standing there grinning at each other.

Sean shrugs. "I think the worst thing that could happen if we keep him around is that he occasionally makes things awkward and then we'll have to talk about it."

"I'm not sure that's actually a bad thing," Tom says, and Sean nods. Tom glances down the hall to the bathroom, where there is now a cloud of steam seeping out around the door. "That and he'll use up all our hot water."

Sean laughs. "There are worse fates."

Tom falls silent, and Sean squeezes his shoulder. "Are we okay?"

Tom bites his lip. "This is stupid, but — can I give you a thing to do? One that I promise not to sabotage?"

"I didn't feel sabotaged before, for the record," Sean says. "But definitely give me a thing, we can start fresh."

"Go knock on the bathroom door and tell Julio to hurry up, the pasta's almost ready."

Sean grins. "And?"

"And nothing, I'm starting small."

"What if he opens the door in nothing but a towel, what do I do then?"

Tom ponders for a second. "You could ogle him a bit, I suppose. No making out before dinner, I think we all need to talk."

Sean leans in and kisses Tom quick. "We could make him go home if you want, you know."

It's Tom's turn to blush. "I don't actually want him to go home, though, I was just — we'll talk, okay?"

"Aye aye, captain."

Sean mock-salutes and head off down the hall, leaving Tom flushed and more than a little turned on, and uncomfortably worried that Julio will think they're _weird_. Or that he'll see how good Sean is and want to be the boss of him too, which Tom is quickly realizing would not be okay. What they would really need for this to work is to make fucking rules, Tom thinks, and then it dawns on him that there is literally nothing stopping them from doing just that.

It's a close thing, but Tom stops himself from jogging down the hall to share his revelation with Sean that instant. Tom gave him a thing to do; first he can let him finish that, then they can figure out everything else.


End file.
